The Murder on the Links, Lord Edgware dies…

Lord Edgware dies is the first of the Christie books I’ve read where I was not really surprised. There were a few details which were very hard for me to figure out and I got one somewhat important thing wrong, but who had done it and the main part of the ‘how’ I’d figured out on my own. As for when I’d figured it out and as for the why, I’d rather not say anything about this in order not to spoil the mystery. But at least when it comes to this Christie novel I should make a point of emphasizing that you can figure out most of what happened here if you think carefully about the evidence – even I could do that, and I’m sure many of my readers are much smarter and much better at this kind of stuff than I am.

In The Murder on the Links I settled for an, I thought quite brilliant-, explanation of the facts early on which seemed to fit the facts exceedingly well – and the explanation also fit with things that happened later on as well. Unfortunately that explanation turned out to be utterly wrong. In a way I’m actually both a bit surprised and perhaps also a little disappointed that Christie did not consider that the facts she presents in her work could be interpreted the way I did – I’m hardly a that original thinker, and there’s no indication anywhere that this line of reasoning was even considered by Christie (/Poirot). I actually considered the fact that Poirot didn’t even mention this possibility as evidence in its favour along the way; it was the kind of hypothesis which, if true, he’d only reveal close to the end of the story – and then he’d talk about how this crucial insight had affected his interpretation of the other events. However it should be pointed out that the story is brilliant even if you get the wrong idea I did (…or some other wrong idea), and you’re probably in for a few surprises either way. These are both great books.

About me/this blog

This blog is mainly a site where I keep track of and share some of the stuff I read and learn. Only a small subset of the posts on this blog deal with economics – I have diverse interests, and as the category cloud in the sidebar below illustrates this blog contains posts about all kinds of stuff: Mathematics, physics, statistics, geology, geography, health care and medicine, psychology, evolutionary biology, genetics, history, anthropology, archaeology, chess, …

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Goodreads Quotes

"Happiness and its anticipation are […] proximate mechanisms that lead us to perform and repeat acts that in the environments of history, at least, would have led to greater reproductive success." (Richard D. Alexander)